Every game with multiple save options has one: A file select menu. Once your game save has been established on your memory storage system, this menu is often skipped past without a seconds thought. But if you are like me, you still take time to appreciate the brief but wonderful loops that have been woven into these games; loops such as the File Select loop from Super Mario 64.

This piece is one of the many musical gems written by the great Koji Kondo, and while the piece itself is a loop that's only about forty four seconds long, the simplicity of the song is very enchanting. These few measures are the bridge between making nightmare fuel out of a colossal Mario head, and the action packed adventure lying deep within Princess Toadstool's castle.

Yeah. Have fun sleeping tonight with that outside your window.

Using classic synthesized instruments like a pan flute and what sounds like reverb strings, Kondo managed to make the menu screen worth taking time to appreciate. Even with it's relatively short loop time, the song doesn't get tedious. And with the music generating software available at the time, there's something to be said about how well the different instruments so easily worked together. The music was never choppy, and the melody played out effortlessly. It gave us a really good taste of classic music to come. Basically, Kondo delivered. To this day, I still get a good spine tingle every now and then just listening to it.

Have I piqued your interest? Can't get enough of this song now? With a piece as well known as this, weeding through some of the mixes out there can seem a little daunting. But trust me, there are some absolutely fantastic reworkings of this composition floating around the internet. Some of these examples include multiple newgrounds.com uploads such as:

On YouTube, there is also a very original remix posted by a Krysshun09, who put a kind of hip-hop spin on the piece. It can be found in this link here.

*I also have remixed this particular composition. But in the interest of NOT appearing like a complete tool, I chose not to list my version among the other mixes here. However, my remix of the file select menu can be found on newgrounds.com as well*

Any one of these remixes, along with the original, can be put on the background of your browser. and without even realizing it, you could listen to it for twenty minutes easily. This game is so iconic, I'm sure that everyone reading this has heard this song more than once. There may even be gamers out there like myself who hear this song and almost immediately feel the urge to get up and dust off that ol' N64 and cartridge. Absolute nostalgia. Music that makes you want to play the game again and again just by hearing it? That's the kind of music that we remember for long after the game has been deemed "old", or in this case, "classic".